Pregnancy Dreaming

I am a very vivid dreamer.  When I go to sleep I can have all kinds of outlandish experiences, and for the most part, I have really appreciated this part of myself.  As a psychologist, I like to analyze my own mind as much as anyone else's (more, probably), and I get a lot of insight from my dreams.  So when I got pregnant, I was really looking forward to the dreams. I had heard that pregnancy could bring on some great ones, and I wanted to see what my mind would bring forth.

But with the Boodge...nothing.  I actually felt disappointed--I barely dreamt about having a baby at all, and I certainly didn't have any bizarre dreams or re-occurring themes.  I had a good pregnancy with him, happy and peaceful, excited to be getting something I'd hoped for for years.   Aside from working too hard and having to move, the pregnancy was pretty stress free.

Peanut has been a different story.  But not what I anticipated, either.  In the first trimester, I had a set of dreams where I somehow lost the Boodge.  I let him slip from my grasp on a rooftop and watched him fall to his death.  I took him to a playground where I saw a dark figure lurking in the shadows...suddenly a whole preschool class came in, obscuring him from my view, and then he was gone and so was the dark figure.  Those dreams were terrifying and I woke up with an upset that carried into the next day.  Looking into pregnancy dreams online, I found another woman who spoke of similar dreams.  She had put it up to her concerns that she would not be able to care for her child as well with a second baby on the way.  This made perfect sense to me, a fear I recognized in myself from the minute I got the positive pregnancy test.  Figuring it out and bringing it to my conscious mind made the dreams go away.

Then came second trimester.  Suddenly my dreams were full of love affairs.  Not the type where I was cheating on my husband and feeling guilty.  In these dreams, I usually wasn't even married.  I was a single girl, sometimes a teenager.  I fell madly in love with a series of dream lovers.  Nate Berkus, the designer/home improvement guy on Oprah (who is gay in real life), wanted to have me by his side everywhere...I was married in that dream and told him I couldn't leave my husband and child, but he didn't care about that. He would make room for them, he just wanted me any way he could have me.  I also had a brief affair with Jamie Oliver.  And another Food Network star, Bob Blumer, figured in a very intense dream where we reconnected after a past relationship, he humbly apologized for ever letting me go and pursued me to get me back.

My favorite one, though, was the one in which I was a young girl (maybe 20), living with my mother, torn between my long-term boyfriend who I'm pretty sure was Justin Timberlake, and an enigmatic, wise, sexy African hip-hop singer named Gazbo.  I met Gazbo on the bus.  He both scared and compelled me, and though he wanted me, he remained aloof while I sorted out my situation with Justin, who I loved but wasn't too excited by anymore.   I'll never forget Gazbo, though we hadn't resolved our problem by the time I awoke.  After that dream I lay in bed for a while wondering why the hell I was having all these crazy, intense love affairs in my sleep.  Sean was snoring beside me and I knew that I loved him and our life together, and didn't want to jeopardize it or escape it at all.  Infidelity, even flirting with it, is totally against my values and something I would never do to him.

In a gentle wave of insight, the answer came to me.  I was never going to experience that sort of intense, early 20's, unfettered falling in love again.  Peanut will make me a mother of two, and I'll be 36.  If, by some horrible happening, my marriage ends, there is no chance that I will be the carefree girl I was in those dreams.  With two children, falling in love in such an uncomplicated and all-consuming way is just not possible.  I would have too much responsibility, and most men would have healthy caution about taking my family on.  Maybe, with one child, and a bit younger, I could get away with that sort of love affair, but I guess my mind was telling me that I had crossed over a threshold now, and one part of my life was definitively over.  And when I realized what it was, I was OK with it.  And the dreams went away.

Flash forward to the third trimester.  Lately, I am woken nightly by a terrifying nightmare.  In one, I am crawling out of a ravine after a politically motivated train crash, my body being cut by shards of metal as I try to escape those below who are still trying to kill survivors.  Afterwards I wander through a school where victims are being kept, occasionally finding someone I know and bursting into tears, holding them.  In one classroom orphaned children are being held, and I instantly connect with one young boy and realize I am going to adopt him.  I wake from that dream deeply disturbed.  Falling back asleep, I dream that my cousin (that's you, KT) has snapped and is trying to kill me and my unborn baby, first by sitting on me and crushing me, then when I escape that by chasing me with a hammer.  Next night,  I am being pursued by a psycho teenager killer, straight out of a horror flick.  And this morning, I dream that I look out the window and see Sean putting the Boodge into a little unstable boat in a pond (which we don't have in our backyard), note the anxiety on Boodge's face, and next see him fall through into the cavity of the boat (like a kayak but much bigger), which I fear is full of water.  Sean is desperately trying to get him out.  I run down the stairs and my pregnant body trips me up and I fall. Wake up, terrified.

Can anyone say anxiety?  Yes, I'm anxious about the big change that is about to happen in our lives.  And I'm hormonal and tired and frayed.   And you know what, subconscious mind?  I really don't need the nightmares.  I don't need the waking up freaked out and being unable to sleep more.  I want to sleep.  I want to have peace at night when my day is done and I am recharging my battery. So here I am, acknowledging that one consciously in the hope that the dreams will go away.  But unlike the other two issues, I'm not sure I have resolution in my mind on this one yet.  I guess I have to try to work on it in the light of day, so that it doesn't come up to haunt me at night.

Beware what you wish for, they say.   I wanted the vivid dreams, and I got them. The second trimester was pretty fun, though.  I'll always have Gazbo, no matter what happens.  But I hope I'll be able to leave all the murder, mayhem, and panic behind once I birth this baby.

What about you out there reading?  Did you experience any of this crazy dreaming during your pregnancy?  I'd love to hear about it, and I promise I won't try to analyze your brain (not publicly, anyway).